With the plethora of free online email services available for anyone to sign up, it's tempting to use one of these accounts to send emails for your new business. But these free accounts are also associated with spam and scammers as anyone can open one to send messages in a matter of minutes. In addition, some mail accounts block messages from free email accounts automatically. A potential customer could pre-judge your business based on your free email address. It's important to get a custom email address specifically assigned to your business if you want customers to take you seriously.

1. Sign up for a web hosting account and a domain name for your business. This is a must even if you don't plan to put up a full website at the time. Some hosting services allow you to purchase a domain name with access to an email account but no monthly hosting fees.

2. Choose a domain name that is similar to your business name or type. For instance, "shoeshoppingfuninc.com" or "shoestoreforyou.com" for a company that sells shoes.

3. Log into your email management account via your web hosting service. Choose the option to add a new user to the account. Many services allow you to add multiple users to one email account with the same domain.

4. Name your main user for the email account. For instance, you can use your first name, "contact us" or another phrase. The main user is commonly the default account where you can change and set all administrative options related to the mail account. Add as many additional users as you wish up to the limit using the same process and save all of your new email addresses.

5. Update the settings for your new email account so that it forwards messages to another email address that you check more often if you want. For instance, if you check a Gmail account more frequently or receive email updates via your PDA phone, you can set up forwarding of messages to your business email address to your Gmail account.

6. Add your main user name to the email extension for your new domain. For instance, if you chose your last name "smith" as the user name and your domain is "shoeshoppingfuninc.com" your final email address is "smith@shoeshoppingfuninc.com." Distribute this new company email address to all of your business-related contacts.

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About the Author

Louise Balle has been writing Web articles since 2004, covering everything from business promotion to topics on beauty. Her work can be found on various websites. She has a small-business background and experience as a layout and graphics designer for Web and book projects.